Notebook: St. Paul's grad Fountain injured in Hoyas' loss

Georgetown junior attackman Jeff Fountain (St. Paul's), who is second on the team with 16 goals, left the Hoyas' 8-6 loss to Villanova on Wednesday with an injury, and his status isn't immediately known.

The possible good news: Senior Chris Nourse, a starting defenseman, is day-to-day with a leg injury suffered in a 17-12 win over Marquette on March 29. Nourse did not dress against the Wildcats, but his injury is not as severe as was first feared.

Next up for Georgetown is a game against St. John's (7-2, 2-1) at Bethpage High on Long Island, the hometown of Hoyas offensive coordinator Matt Rewkowski (Johns Hopkins).

•Midfield production was a problem for Penn State early in the season, but that took a turn Saturday in a 7-6 win at Villanova.

Through the first five games of the season, the Nittany Lions' attack scored 42 of 52 goals, good for 77.7 percent of the team's scoring. Through the past five games — all wins — the midfield has scored 21 of 44, good for 47.7 percent.

Luckily for Penn State, a key piece in that uptick will be playing this weekend. Tom LaCrosse had a hat trick against Villanova but went down late in the game and had to be tended to by a trainer. He has been practicing and is expected to play this weekend against visiting Drexel.

Coach Jeff Tambroni noted the fearlessness of LaCrosse after the game.

"He just drove to the goal with reckless abandon," Tambroni said. "That is the way he plays. What you saw right there is what we see every day. We're afraid he's going to get hurt every day in practice because he just plays with reckless abandon. He puts his head down and he goes."

•We've just passed April, and the season is well past halfway over: Navy has only three games remaining, Virginia is guaranteed just four and teams that won't qualify for their conference tournaments are looking at having four games left, too.

In 1977, champion Cornell began its season March 23 and played 14 games in eight weeks.

"I think in the preseason, our objective from the first legal day of practice on Feb. 1 until March 1, we had a month to prepare," said Richie Moran, the coach of that Cornell team. "So skillwise, we did a remarkable job. We played box lacrosse for two weeks, two weeks of fundamentals, which I felt made our team outstanding from the get-go.

"Today, since the schedule is moved up, teams want to scrimmage almost four days after they start practice. I think that has a lot to do with efficiency in shooting; in the '70s and '80s, we had great goalies — those guys made 20 saves per game. The fundamentals of the game made the players much stronger and better."

The seeds of doubt have been planted. Maryland, Notre Dame, Duke and Denver are left in the running for the men's lacrosse crown, and it looks like a tossup as to who's going to emerge on Memorial Day. For the first time in five years, four seeded teams reached championship weekend. For a...

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